How to boringly celebrate your pathetic adult birthday

FOR KIDS, birthdays are an exciting occasion of cakes and presents. But once you’re an adult they’re nothing more than a new high number to celebrate in these dull ways: 

Like lots of Facebook messages

Your Facebook wall will be cluttered with generic birthday wishes, ranging from ‘happy birthday’ to ‘have a good day!’. Idly scroll through them and click the thumbs up icon to show your lukewarm appreciation, while making a mental note of anyone who did not wish you well. They’re on your blacklist now.

Carefully untape presents

As an adult you’re not allowed to tear open presents with childish enthusiasm. Instead carefully peel off the tape to reveal what you’ve been bought off your Amazon wishlist and fold the paper in an environmentally aware fashion. You could now use it again and save about two quid. Party on.

Go to work

You left it too late to book the time off, meaning you’ll mark the big day by trudging into the office and getting bollocked in front of your teammates for not hitting your KPIs. Then you’ll have to sit through a tuneless rendition of Happy Birthday and pretend to laugh at all the crap jokes your colleagues wrote in your birthday card.

Take stock of your life so far

Birthdays are an annual reminder that you aren’t getting any longer, so use this opportunity to reflect on what you’ve achieved in your years. It won’t take long. Onlookers will assume you’ve paused for a second to suppress a panic attack. For the sake of your sanity, try not to remember what your parents had achieved by your age, including having you.

Go for a meal

The most boring and default of adult birthday celebrations. You’re only doing it because you feel like you have to do something, and your friends will resent you for dragging them out and making them pay for a fancy meal. Watch for nobody ordering starters or desserts to try and get the ordeal over as soon as possible, as you sit there in your paper hat.

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Child-free 43-year-old still manages to have dad bod

A MAN who is neither a father nor subject to the stresses of being a parent still has the proper dad bod, witnesses have agreed. 

Tom Logan, aged 43, hoped that since he has avoided the path of parenthood he would keep his abs and trim figure into middle age, but instead has a 36-inch waist and a paunch.

He said: “It doesn’t seem fair. It’s not like I’m on my arse looking after toddlers all day, munching Pom-Bears as I follow them round a shitty local park.

“I swim, I cycle, I work in a demanding job. I’m not living on a diet of left-over fish fingers and potato waffles. I’m up and down to the microwave cooking a global range of cuisines.

“Certainly I meet a lot of Tinder dates in bars, and second dates in restaurants, or I’m working late then going to the pub, or meeting friends at the pub, or at the weekend I go on a bracing walk to a country pub. But that’s just an active social life.

“I deliberately avoided having kids, but my heavy gut means everyone assumes I’ve got at least two. I asked a girl away for the weekend and she said ‘Ah, so the children are with your ex?’”

Colleague Helen Archer said: “He makes dad jokes as well and you should’ve seen his dad dancing at the last office do. You can’t cheat genetics.”